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Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

Pretty cool.

Fugazi often played non-traditional venues in thier home town of Washington, D.C.

And in other locales, too. I saw them at a church in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass. in 1989. At the time there were a dozen clubs in the Boston area that could have gladly hosted the band (TT the Bears, the Channel, the Rat, Bunratties, etc) but at the time Fugazi had this thing -- I think dating from MacKaye's Minor Threat days -- about only doing shows where kids could see them for $5, without age restrictions. No clubs could go that low, or insisted on 21+, so Fugazi did the show at the church.

It was an awesome show.

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Also, their staff had envelopes with $5 bills in them. If you acted a fool or caused trouble they would escort you to the door and give you an envelope with your money back.

Was Fugazi the only band doing this at the time?

When I was tuned in to the local music scene in the greater Boston area (say 15 years later), it seemed like most shows were at 'non-traditonal venues' like VFW halls, churches, and basements. It's funny to think of a time when DIY bands played mostly 'real' venues

I think the local club/audience dynamics changed. These clubs in the late 80s/early 90s could fill up a small venue with an out-of-state headliner and a few local supporting acts which gave an incentive to regularly do these shows. 10 or 15 years later I think that became far more difficult as fewer people wanted to see loud bands in a small club, which drove the DIY bands back into DIY spaces. I remember the last time I went to TTs in the early 2010s and very few young people were there to see the rock bands.

There were always DIY shows percolating at the edges in the 80s, sometimes with well-known names participating. I saw F.O.D. in wide hallway on the 2nd floor of a beat-up Allston commercial building that was sometimes used for art shows and poetry readings.

No but there were very few bands of their stature that did it.

it's just DIY culture. the $5 thing was very much a Fugazi rule though, definitely after minor threat (most of those shows wouldn't have been much more than $5, save when they opened for Trouble Funk at UMD)

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